Hell Bent for Leather

Hell Bent for Leather (1960)

Runtime: 82 minutes

Directed by: George Sherman

Starring: Audie Murphy, Felicia Farr, Stephen McNally, Robert Middleton, James Westmoreland

From: Universal

Yes, I watched this because of the Judas Priest song of the same name. I found Leather in The Bowels of the Internet when other Audie Murphy pictures are easier to track down because within the past few years it showed one night at the New Beverly Cinema and the title amused me. Back in early 2020, I mentioned how my first Murphy movie (No Name on the Bullet) was viewed because right before that, both my mother and father viewed another of his pictures on TV because it starred him. That’s bittersweet because this is when Mom started to become sick & I had no idea at the time this is what would eventually kill her later in the year.

It was nice to see Murphy as the hero in a film instead of being cast against type as the villain in No Name on the Bullet. He was a real-life badass soldier in World War II and parlayed that into a movie career for a time. Murphy was not a master thespian by any means but at least was fine the two times I’ve seen him. Hell Bent has a simple plot where a murderin’ SOB named Travers steals our hero Clay’s horse. Clay walks into town and people think he’s Travers. Things escalate from there and Felicia Farr becomes involved. The Alabama Hills (an area shown in the Ranown Westerns that Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott did) play a prominent role here.

Clay is not the most dynamic character nor did Murphy deliver the most dynamic performance. Be that as it may, this was still an entertaining yarn where-for example-the US Marshal isn’t quite the heroic character that we stereotypically see in genre fare. There are colorful characters in a lovely California setting so this plus the solid direction from B-movie veteran George Sherman made this a good time even if this was not the most imaginative Western I’ve ever experienced by any means. Some familiar faces of the time made a good impression, especially Robert Middleton in a small but fiery role and Stephen McNally as the desperate, menacing Marshal.

It’s a shame that Murphy suffered from PTSD and tried to advocate it as a serious condition in a time when many didn’t believe it… then died in a plane crash in his late 40’s. In any case, I’m up for viewing some of his other work in the future.